OPINION & EDITORIAL
In-state tuition hike acceptable
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by Badger Herald Editorial Board
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Every student at the University of Wisconsin wants lower tuition. Thanks to continued state economic trouble, students will not be seeing that drop any time soon. But perhaps out-of-state students can breathe a little easier next time the Board of Regents introduces a new round of hikes.
For now, non-resident students pay more than four times as much for tuition as Wisconsin residents—a far higher ratio than any of the Big Ten’s other nine public schools. When tuition jumped another 8 percent for in-state students this fall, the out-of-staters took a 13 percent hit, the result of Gov. McCallum’s provision for a 5 percent non-resident surcharge on every tuition increase.
This semester, Wisconsin natives and Minnesota residents with reciprocity each paid $2,212, while students from everywhere else tossed $9,188 the university’s way.
But the administration is apparently beginning to understand that such a disparity damages the campus’s goal of providing the highest-quality education for its students. Wisconsin’s yield rate for out-of-state students is suffering, meaning some students who are accepted but have other choices take a second look at the price and opt to go elsewhere.
This costs the university, because each large non-resident tuition payment is crucial for the system to fill funding gaps. As enrollment soars but out-of-state retention lags, UW is losing money paying for services consumed by in-staters attending for a cheap price.
The disparity, by discouraging out-of-state enrollment, also undermines more abstract efforts to improve the educational environment, like the university’s diversity initiatives.
The non-residents most likely to balk at the price are naturally those less prepared to afford it. UW targets students in inner cities and urban areas to boost its minority representation, some of whom are underprivileged. These low-income students are the first to withdraw when the cost runs too high, and the Admissions Office has no mechanism to replace this lost enrollment.
UW System President Katharine Lyall said last week that continued budget cuts will force the Board of Regents to call for another tuition hike or cut enrollment in order to keep quality services. Fortunately, in a recent interview with The Badger Herald editorial board, Chancellor Wiley acknowledged the shortcomings of the Madison campus’s tuition disparity and indicated that in-state students will have to be the ones to bear the next cost increase.
The 5 percent surcharge obstacle remains, however, and the regents will have to lobby the state legislature and governor-elect Jim Doyle to not include this provision in the next state budget. State residents are an important part of this university, not least because their parents’ taxes provide what state funding the school does get. UW reserves at least three-quarters of its enrollment for residents and reciprocity students and rightly offers these students a local discount.
But Wisconsin residents at UW, who currently pay the lowest in-state tuition of any Big Ten school, should certainly bear an increase in tuition so as to bring UW more in-tune with other Big Ten schools. Note that in-state costs—affecting a great majority of students—would need to increase by far less than another out-of-state hike to raise the same amount of money.
As long as the state continues to tie financial aid to tuition, Wisconsin residents should be able to afford the burden of supporting the university and helping out-of-state students enjoy reasonable rates.
